Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Be Proactive . . . not reactive

The New Year is in full swing, so what better time than now
to take a good look at your office fees? When was the last time you raised your
fees and by how much? Many doctors won’t even touch their fees because they’re afraid
that it will upset their patients. However, if done responsibly, most of your
patients will not even notice the raise.

Many years ago, before I started consulting, I went to a
course and the speaker told the audience, “On Monday morning, you need to go
back and raise your fees by 25%,” but this speaker didn’t give us any real
system or method of how we should go about raising fees in the future. When I
went back to my office on Monday and started doing the math, I said to myself,
“Yep, our patients will get upset.” So I took a different approach about
raising our office fees that most dentists are afraid to do. I started raising
our fees about every 12-18 months … no matter what. You know what? Most of our
patients didn’t even notice. They didn’t notice because I was only raising our
hygiene fees about 1.5% - 2% and our operative fees 2% - 3%. We kept it
consistent, we kept it small, and we did it regularly. When our patients asked,
I gave them the same answer every time … and it wasn’t “because our consultant
said so.”

Most offices I work with have either never raised their fees
or they raise them in response to something. I firmly believe that dental
practices should be proactive about raising fees, not reactive, so when
something like a 2.5% lab fee increase happens, the practice is already partly
there. Once your office gets on a routine of increasing fees, it is just like changing
the oil in your car. And, just like the changing your car’s oil, this is an
important part of the regular maintenance of your dental
practice.

So what is the easiest way to do it in Dentrix? Go to the
Office Manager > Maintenance > Auto Fee Schedule Changes > then at the
top select your office fee schedule, now you have some choices -- you can just
up it by a certain % or you can click copy to Fee Schedule and select your
office fee schedule again and manually change them (this is how I always do it
to keep it all at whole dollars). When you are satisfied with your updated fee
schedule, click Accept and you are finished. Now make yourself a note to do
this again on a regular schedule.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.